About Me

Gregg Walker is a Harlem Resident and 1997 graduate of Yale Law School who worked as an investment banker for 9 years and was the Vice President of Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions at Viacom for 3 years. Gregg served as the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Sony from 2009 to 2016, and he launched his own private investing firm in July 2016 (www.gawalker.co). Gregg was chosen in 2010 by Crain's as one of NYC's 40 Under 40 Rising Stars (http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/40under40/profiles/2010/gregg-walker). Gregg is a Deacon at Abyssinian Baptist Church and served as the chairman of the Board of the Harlem YMCA. He has served on the Boards of movie studio MGM and music publishing companies Sony/ATV and EMI Music Publishing. He is also a Board member of Harlem RBI and Derek Jeter's Turn 2 Foundation. He is a former Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a representative of the US at the 2002 Young Leaders Conference of the American Council on Germany. Gregg is also a member of many other foundations and community organizations.

Here is New York State, Mayor Bloomberg has supported former Staten Island Republican Rep. Vito Fossella, one of the gun lobby's most loyal public officials. He is also the biggest donor to the Republicans in the New York State Senate, though those Republicans have successfully opposed Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to bring bullet microstamping to our state. We have supported the Mayor's microstamping push, but the Mayor is the largest donor to the group that is blocking the Mayor's efforts. He is truly his own worst enemy, and people in NYC are being killed because of the successful opposition to gun control by elected officials who remain in office because of the Mayor's financial support.

Less than a week after Aurora, the two candidates are back to
politics as usual, attacking each other on gaffes and trivialities. If
not now, when is the time for them to outline their solutions to gun
violence?
After the massing shooting in Tucson last year, we heard: “Now is
not the time.” We heard the same refrain after shooting sprees at
Virginia Tech and Columbine. It’s as if as a country, we cannot mourn
the dead and protect the living at the same time.
I refuse to accept that — and as a country, we have never accepted
that when our safety has been at risk. When our country was attacked by
terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, we did not wait to respond. We took
immediate steps to prevent another attack. Here in New York City, we
gave our police officers the tools they need to do their jobs — and
protect innocent lives.
But when 34 people are murdered with guns every day, Washington just
looks the other way — even when massacres occur in a single place. It
has been 18 months since the Tucson shooting, and still Washington has
not taken the steps necessary to ensure that all people with mental
health and drug histories, including the Tucson shooter, are precluded
from buying guns.
The reason for the inaction is that — according to conventional
wisdom — talking about gun regulations is unpopular with voters. But
when you ask the American people — including gun owners — if they favor
smarter, tougher measures to keep guns out of the hands of criminals,
they overwhelmingly say they do.

If Bloomberg would back up these statements with a small portion of his billions of dollars of wealth, he might make a difference and save lives.

Sylvia Woods was a graduate of the tobacco fields and truck patches of Hemingway, South Carolina. Much like family and many others, she and her husband joined the wave North in search of a better life, while maintaining strong links to the family “home place.” Sylvia’s, now an institution of 50 years in the New York scene, made way for a whole host of fabulous soul food restaurants, each giving a taste of home to migrants and their descendants but to tourists from around the world as well.

Sylvia’s institution has known its politicians, civil rights activists, artists and entertainers - it was the place Bill O’Reilly and Al Sharpton could break bread in peace, and the place where hip hop deals and careers were born. Like “the South’s Julia Child,” Edna Lewis, North Carolina’s Mildred “Mama Dip” Council, and Chef Leah Chase and Mrs. Willie Mae Seaton of New Orleans, Ms. Sylvia is part of a pantheon of black women nourished by drive and quiet dignity, but to us she’s more than her history or any of its hype.

Sylvia Woods represented the survival of something more than just “soul food,” she was an Old World craftswoman; essentially an immigrant bringing her cuisine to a new land. This woman was our mother, our grandmother - to the world. She helped make it possible for culinary historians and food writers like myself to claim and love our food and embrace it as our inheritance. She inspired others to pursue their dreams and represent their Southern regional flavors.

Ms. Sylvia was proof of the resilience of the Great Migration experience, and proof that we had done more than just move North or escape the South; we brought the best of who we were and we enriched the planet through the nourishment that gave strength to our ancestors. Sylvia was one of many heritage bearers, carrying flavors passed from Africa to slave ships to plantations to sharecroppers to freedom seekers, business people, chefs, migrants, and now her great-great grandchildren and beyond. The Woods’ legacy was giving African America back a word that is often reserved for other Americans with far off lands: tradition

To be sure, this is not the death of Sylvia’s as an institution. The restaurant will continue to thrive and the family will carry on Sylvia’s legacy and high standards of hospitality and flavor. And yet, today America is missing one of its cultural and culinary icons; someone whose love for her kin, country and country roots will continue to inspire us all to cook with bigger hearts and plenty of soul.

As Judge Scheindlin notes in her opinion, a report by the legal scholar Jeffrey Fagan found that blacks
and Latinos were more likely to be stopped at police discretion, not
just in high-crime, high-minority areas, but in districts where crime
is minimal and populations are mixed.
Police officials say that officers stop people when they have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. An analysis
last year by The Times of street stops in one mainly black Brooklyn
neighborhood found that officers listed vague reasons in half the stops,
including “furtive movement,” a category that can be used to mask
harassment. The Fagan report found that arrests are made in less than 6 percent
of all street stops — a lower rate than if the police simply set up
random checkpoints. Less than 1 percent of stops turned up weapons. This suggests that hundreds
of thousands of people, mostly minorities, have been stopped for no
legitimate reason — or worse, because of the color of their skin.
The Police Department says it has a training program that explains
proper arrest procedure and warns officers against racial profiling. But
Judge Scheindlin was sharply critical of those efforts, noting that
numerous officers did not recall ever receiving such training.

Investigators went beyond [the whistle
blower's] specific claims and found many other instances in the 81st
Precinct where crime reports were missing, had been misclassified,
altered, rejected, or not even entered into the computer system that
tracks crime reports.

These weren't minor incidents. The victims included a Chinese-food
delivery man robbed and beaten bloody, a man robbed at gunpoint, a cab
driver robbed at gunpoint, a woman assaulted and beaten black and blue, a
woman beaten by her spouse, and a woman burgled by men who forced
their way into her apartment.

"When viewed in their totality, a disturbing pattern is prevalent and
gives credence to the allegation that crimes are being improperly
reported in order to avoid index-crime classifications," investigators
concluded. "This trend is indicative of a concerted effort to
deliberately underreport crime in the 81st Precinct."

[A]lthough the stop-and-frisk rate increased six fold, the murder rate
continued the same slight rate of decline during the last decade as it
has since 1997. See the graph above. In fact, crime was reduce sharply in the early 1990's because of a massive increase in police officers and a Dinkins-led tactic called "community policing".

“A large reservoir of good will was under construction” before Mr. Giuliani, he told the City Bar Association.
“It was called community policing. But it was quickly abandoned for
tough-sounding rhetoric and dubious stop-and-frisk tactics that sowed
new seeds of community mistrust.”

He has changed his mind.

Mayor Bloomberg and his police chief Ray Kelly defend stop and frisk
tactics by using the "big lie" that stop and frisk reduces crime. They
know it does not reduce crime, yet they increase the number of young men
of color who are stopped each year. They vocally and forcefully defend
the practice as if their minds have been replaced by the mind of Bull
Connor.

Time for Bloomberg and Kelly to Leave Office

We have experienced a recent dramatic rise in shootings. Bloomberg and Kelly have been obsessed with the racist stop and frisk approach, and that obsession is now costing lives in large numbers. This trend cannot be tolerated. If Bloomberg were one-tenth as focused on reducing crime as he has been on defending his racist law enforcement approach, preventing people of color from joining the Fire Department, maintaining the whitest administration in generations, and preventing children of color from entering gifted and talented programs, crime would be dropping rather than skyrocketing.

Now, after 11 years of the Mayor's refusal to follow common sense and after 11 years of the Mayor's unapologetic adherence to an Apartheid system, we need a new direction; we can ill afford to wait for the Mayor's current term to end. He must leave now.

Monday, July 9, 2012

With the Olympics around the corner and the US men's basketball team now selected, New York City basketball fans can rejoice is seeing their local superstars on the US Olympic basketball team for 2012.

But there is some irony in that after everything that happened with the Knicks,
with Anthony receiving most of the blame for D'Antoni's departure in
March, that the two will be together every day here, in Washington, in
Manchester, England, in Barcelona, and finally in London with the Olympic team.

Both sides can laugh now, and
apparently they did when they met at the team dinner Thursday night. It
was the first time Anthony and D'Antoni, an Olympic team assistant
coach, spoke since the two parted ways after the morning shootaround
March 14.

"We talked, we laughed and joked,"
Anthony said. "I told you all back then I never had any bad blood with
coach Mike. We've always been on the same page. It's good to see him." Anthony can shed defenders much easier than the perception that he was responsible for D'Antoni's decision to step down.

The two had philosophical differences.
D'Antoni runs an offense predicated on pick-and-rolls and ball and
player movement. Anthony is more of a post-up, isolation player.

Anthony has played in the Olympics twice, winning a bronze in 2004 and a gold in 2008.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Rangel, who has been an impressive and productive member of the United States House of Representatives for 40 years, was declared the winner of the Democratic Primary last week by many news organizations, and he has a lead in the unofficial vote count. But, Rangel, who is also the Dean of the New York State Congressional delegation, has a very small lead.

As of Friday, six percent of the vote, represented by 32 precincts, had yet to be counted. Another 2,447 affidavit ballots and 667 absentee votes had also not yet been counted. Rangel's lead was 1,032 votes, according to the Board of Elections.

According to Politico, the reason that six percent of votes have not yet been tabulated is that the police officers tasked with providing an unofficial record of the data from those precincts after securing voting boxes on election night had not done so. On Friday of last week, elections officials said a final tally would arrive by 2 p.m. that day. The final tally was not communicated until Saturday.

What Next?

The person whom Charlie Rangel apparently defeated last week, State Senator Adriano Espaillat, has filed suit in an effort to get access to the vote counting process.

State Senator Espaillat issued a statement:
“Our campaign has not been allowed to adequately monitor the Board of Elections’ proceedings, as required by law. The BOE continues to stonewall not only our campaign but also the news media, which is particularly disturbing given that it blocks the free flow of information and transparency — the bedrock of our democratic system.”

Now, the courts will decide how much access the campaigns are given. The Board of Elections will, hopefully, count all of the legitimate votes and announce an official winner this week.